Accepted guess Not a possible answer B tier for first-turn info

NOSER

NOSER is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

An indulgence in nosiness or other curiosity.

“You got your grade back already? Let's have a noser!”

Noun

A punch to the nose.

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

In a sentence

Tom is a brown-noser.
© tatoeba.org contributor Fenrir (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Bob is really a brown noser.
© tatoeba.org contributor Dejo (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use NOSER in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 96.0% of possible answers.

Wordle status

A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.

Playable guess

Yes

Included in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.

Possible answer

No

The solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.

Past Wordle answer

No completed appearance

No appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

How NOSER performs as a guess

Wordle accepts NOSER as a guess, but the solver does not list it as a possible answer.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 89.8% of games, misses completely in 10.2%, and leaves about 96 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,068 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.60 guesses in games solved within six turns.

Try your feedback pattern

Tap the tiles to match your feedback, then see the ranked follow-up guesses.

All gray? Tap a tile to cycle gray → yellow → green.

First-turn measures

All four describe NOSER used as an opening guess. Entropy is the same idea as “avg ruled out” on a log scale: a higher number means the guess splits the possible answers into more, smaller groups.

5.36 Entropy (bits)
96 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
96.0% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How NOSER performed in the previous complete opener benchmark, against its captured answer snapshot. These research figures are separate from today's solver recommendations. See the data page for the method.

3.60 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#1,068 Rank among openers
Opening with NOSER left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.60 average. It ranks #1,068 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
85
3 guesses
972
4 guesses
1,108
5 guesses
174
6 guesses
14

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ENORS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
90%
Green tile
30%
All gray
10%

Feedback distribution

NOSER can come back 116 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

242 answers
218 answers
134 answers
133 answers
122 answers
118 answers
91 answers
85 answers
81 answers
71 answers
65 answers
58 answers
54 answers
46 answers
45 answers
38 answers
35 answers
35 answers
33 answers
32 answers
31 answers
30 answers
30 answers
28 answers
27 answers
25 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
19 answers

Letter-value totals

Base letter-value totals for NOSER; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.

Scrabble

N1O1S1E1R1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.

Strategy after playing NOSER

What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to NOSER.

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing NOSER:

10% chance
Suggested:
PLAIT
9% chance
Suggested:
DEALT
6% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL

Follow-ups for common patterns

Ranked follow-up guesses for the 10 most common feedback patterns.

10.2% →
PLAIT 5.59 bits
9.1% →
DEALT 5.68 bits
5.6% →
TRAIL 5.20 bits
5.6% →
TRACE 4.84 bits
5.1% →
SHALT 5.40 bits
4.9% →
GIANT 4.98 bits
3.8% →
SHALT 5.01 bits
3.6% →
MOLDY 4.04 bits
3.4% →
PALET 3.52 bits
3.0% →
BLOAT 5.01 bits

Research on NOSER

Game-tree analysis and word research for NOSER, with an explanation for each figure.

Optimal play

Opening with NOSER, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.62 guesses and ranks #665 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with NOSER can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.60, at or below the proven-optimal 3.62, because the two figures score different answer lists.

These figures come from exhaustive game-tree search and are exact for the NYT lists of July 2023 (3,158 answers). They do not use the site's working answer pool.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
NOSER sits in the rare band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word few players will have met in print.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).